The breaking news is the plan for a humanitarian corridor. The rest is only notable for what he didn’t say: he didn’t urge Israel not to retaliate, or to accept the ceasefire, or not to occupy Gaza.
If there is any nation in the world that doesn’t mind assassinating people it wants to assassinate, regardless of what country they’re located in, it would be Israel.
I dunno… Russia and North Korea have both assassinated people in other countries…
But it would be a small list, that’s true.
That doesn’t seem like a productive statement; I’d figure that someone could just as easily say that it is a political option to do so, and that those saying otherwise Just Don’t Get It — and then, with a sad little shake of the head, dismissively refer back to that well-poisoning remark to note that you, in particular, Just Don’t Get It, if you try to claim otherwise.
Why preemptively rule out a diiscussion by flatly stating it’s not a political option, throwing in a “nutballs” along the way, and ending with a Just Don’t Get It? Why not start a discussion instead?
Grrr’s tiktok reminded me of stuff posted by a guy on another message board i used to hang out on. He kept posting “evidence” that 9/11 hadn’t happened, or was engineered by the Jews, all of whom left before the building was detonated by explosives carefully placed in the building. And the deaths were exaggerated.
My brother was in the bond industry at the time. He lost friends and coworkers. His synagogue had a few funerals every day for a couple of weeks, as the extent of the deaths unfolded. I am extremely certain that Jews died in 9/11. But he found lots of people willing to claim otherwise.
I was slightly amused that in the follow-up “MSM” article supporting that TikTok’s ridiculous claims, they tried to raise doubts about the authenticity of beheading reports by pointing out that the Israeli news agency employed “dozens of ex-military staff.” Which maybe isn’t that surprising in a country with mandatory service.
Pretty much every adult over 18 in Israel that isn’t in the military is ex-military. Unless they’re Ultra-Orthodox who, for some reason, are allowed to spend all day in Torah study instead of doing their mandatory military service like everyone else or having a job that earns a living. So… “employs dozens of ex-military staff” means… great! no child labor! They’re all adults!
If they’re Jewish. Israeli Muslims are not required to serve but I understand that some do.
From Wikipedia:
The IDF’s conscription laws only apply to three communities: the Jews, the Druze, and the Circassians.[3] Both men and women are drafted from the Jewish community, whereas only men are drafted from the Druze and Circassian communities.
Arabs and Beduin are not drafted but are allowed to serve, and apparently a lot of Beduin do so.
The article also says a lot of Jewish women don’t serve, either because they are married are claim to be religious. Fake marriages and fake claims of religious observance are apparently both fairly common among young women.
I was referring to the weapons used to launch rockets into Gaza. Those would be in the interior of Israel and not along the Gaza Wall. They should have been able to pound the breaches in the wall to stall the invasion so troops can be organized and transported to the site of battle.
Another aspect of the nuclear thing is that nuclear material could be used without it being an actual fission bomb.
In the mid to late '90s there was a Scientific American article about problems with accounting for, and tracking of, nuclear material.
Apparently, at that time, (sorry, no cite), there was known to be missing or unaccounted for, about a pop/soda can’s worth of nuclear material. The article also stated that had that material alone been attached to the World Trade Center bomb (in the underground parking lot in the early '90s) it would have rendered a significant amount of Manhattan uninhabitable for thousands of years (or something of that magnitude).
Oh, there’s a lot more unaccounted for nuclear material than that these days. Scary stuff. But no, I don’t think it would have rendered Manhattan uninhabitable for “thousands” of years , although the clean up would have been a nightmare.
Look up “orphan source” - here’s the wiki and a list of orphan source incidents.
I’m a bit puzzled (but happy!) nothing like that has been used in warfare so far. And I hope never will be.
I think, perhaps, some of what was referred to at the start of this discussion might have been very, very graphic photos and videos of the actual killing, maiming, raping, and kidnapping that took place rather than new types of weaponry. It’s known that Hamas documented what they did and posted it on social media. A lot of it was taken down quickly but also might well have been passed to various authorities which might have used it for briefings of government officials.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Hamas attacks Israel, October 2023
A combat tactics analysis would be quite interesting, and while I believe much is openly known about the disposition of forces on both sides, I do not have that information at my fingertips. As for your question, who is calling in this rocket artillery (and is that an appropriate tactic) and what troops are being organized and transported and how many hours does that take? In the meantime, Hamas personnel are just blowing through the fence and dispersing. Note that the success, such as there was, of the Hamas breach was that it was a surprise attack, but they were not able to hold on to any positions. And, indeed, subsequently plenty of troops and artillery were organized in response but this took at least hours.
You are correct. I downloaded the article a year or two ago and I clearly confused and/or misremembered some numbers. So, from January 1996, Scientific American, “The Real Threat
of Nuclear Smuggling”, the section I was referring to actually stated:
“Even if such a group did not acquire enough uranium or plutonium to make a fission weapon, they might be able to mix unstable isotopes with conventional explosives to create widespread
contamination. If the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in New York City had made use of radioactive substances, for example, they might have killed thousands and rendered a
major business district uninhabitable.”
Apologies for the hijack.
Nitpick: Both male and female Israeli Jews can have circumstances exempting them from military service, and substantial percentages of both men and women avail themselves of those exemptions.
I would guess the purpose was to trigger a massive retaliation in attempt to rally support. Hamas is calling for a world Jihad on Friday (the 13th).
Whoever monitors the border provides the coordinates for artillery. The troops sent in would be whoever is on standby. The purpose of striking first with artillery/rockets is to provide time for the troops to arrive. Israel is a small country so there isn’t a lot of territory to cover. It’s not anything new in warfare.
The probability of Hamas launching yet another attack was pretty high. This was an epic fail on the part of Israel.
What I meant in my first comment was that the unit monitoring the border was one of the first to be taken out be Hamas and did not have time to do anything. Supposedly one of the survivors released more details on social media because she wanted the public to know about what happened, but I am not readily finding the original post.
It seems so. Remember, however, that one does not know in advance exactly where and when the actual assaults will take place, even when one knows it is going to happen. Of course in hindsight it is easy to come up with a counter-strategy.
It’s not “breaking news,” so asking it here, but I wonder if this will turn out to be true? Or if Hamas was counting on a general uprising, or upon more support from Arab states than they’ve actually turned out to be getting. That would be a pretty big miscalculation, but on the other hand, I’m not sure the attack itself wasn’t a miscalculation.
At least, I’m not sure what the leadership was expecting from the west or their ability to weather a counteroffensive. Lots of people want “peace in the middle east.” Last week, some of them—definitely a decent chunk of the BDS crowd if nothing else, and a lot of my leftist friends—would’ve been so committed to that desire as to defend Hamas against charges of being a terrorist organization.
I guess I haven’t checked to see what the Tulsi Gabbards or Glenn Greenwalds of the world are saying, but if you start off your campaign by massacring hundreds of civilians, nobody is going to stand up for you. Even the people with #FreePalestine and a flag emoji in their Twitter bios are going to sit that one out and let you get bombed.
I’m not sure it even counts as a Pyrrhic victory if, to average westerners, the attack turns out to be for Hamas what learning about the gulags was to the Soviet Union—that they become so toxic that anyone defending the aim of Palestinian statehood loses credibility by proxy, the way Stalinism gutted the American communist movement.